


Orbiting Bodies

by Hayato (TheLennyBunny)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Complete, Ending What Ending, Gen, LGBTQ Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-15 20:38:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17535836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLennyBunny/pseuds/Hayato
Summary: They co-exist quietly, ignoring those outside their bubble. They've years of experience.





	Orbiting Bodies

**Author's Note:**

> Well,

They buy a house together after the war, and no one really understands. It doesn't matter. They’ve both gotten used to the poison of others.

* * *

Harry isn’t an auror, or a professor at Hogwarts, or a doctor- excuse him,  _ Mediwizard _ \- at St. Mungo’s. He doesn’t work in the Ministry, as the Minister or retainer or otherwise, and he doesn’t laze about all day in the manor or Diagon Alley, hitting up young witches. He doesn’t play on a Quidditch team professionally, much as Ron and Ginny say he should.

He spends his mornings teaching basic spells to children in rural villages, and his afternoons shelving books in mundane libraries. No one looks twice at the shaggy young man with square glasses stocking shelves, stopping sometimes to read the books he’s sorting. No one thinks twice about the kindly teen offering help to those too poor to seek out tutors.

He’s happy.

* * *

Draco isn’t an auror, or a potions master, or a lazabout pig- excuse him,  _ socialite _ \- of the British nobility. He doesn’t work at the Ministry, doesn’t study Dark magic and spend his days plotting how to become the next Dark lord or how to ban muggleborns from society. Doesn’t professionally play Quidditch or spend his time courting women to create the next heir to the Malfoy line, much as Parkinson and Greengrass imply he should be.

He spends his mornings and afternoons teaching Defense spells to sixth and seventh years, and his afternoons guiding first and second years through what should and shouldn’t be avoided. His evenings are spent reading whatever’s been left out on the table and cooking dinner, breathing in a silence that isn’t forced into place by poise. No one wants to look twice at the put-together young man with a faded red mark on his arm, pausing to ask if a worn-down student is alright or asking after their studies. No one thinks twice about the young man secluding himself in his quarters, whispering about his name and his history.

He’s content.

* * *

Hours after the battle, Harry sits blank, surrounded by others as they race to find loved ones or bodies, to salvage what’s left and begin to rebuild. For the first time in seven years a shadow’s been removed from his shoulder, and he doesn’t know how to breathe without it. He’s adrift.

Someone sits next to him and he barely turns his head, spying mesed blond hair and a dirty face covered still in soot. Malfoy glances back at him. He’s got the same expression. Harry wonders what happened to his mother.

They sit together as the light crests over the horizon.

* * *

Harry visits the Weasleys, the Lovegoods, and the friends who’ve stayed singularities and they’re all different in their own ways. Ron is more settled and Hermione looser, and Neville is confident even though still quiet. Dean and Seamus have settled in with their wife and twins, and Luna is still in the clouds even as she weaves prophecies.

Ginny plays Quidditch professionally. Ron takes care of the children, and Hermione argues court cases in the halls of the Ministry. Neville farms for potions masters, Arthur’s retired and Molly is going greyer each day and they’ve all progressed. Matured and become content in the wake of the war, maybe. Or maybe they’ve simply grown rooted, secure in the idea of no boogeyman hanging over them.

They tend to worry after him, asking if he’s alright, what he’s doing, what it’s like to live with  _ him.  _ Why he does. If he plans to get a  “job” soon, if he’s seen any men or women lately that have caught his attention. If things have settled, if he’s  _ happy.  _ He can’t give them an answer that satisfies, because he can’t quite answer all himself.

* * *

Draco visits the Slytherin alumni mostly, arguing with Blaise and drinking wine with Parkinson and laughing at dinner with old classmates. Most don’t bother with the airs they held before, torn down and melted in the wake of the war. There isn’t a point to airs when the world’s already seen them on their knees after all.

Most of them spend their time flitting between each other’s homes, talking about this divorce or that affair or the elite past the waters, the socialites they’ve met from Japan or South Africa or whatever country they’ve recently visited. They haven’t matured, not necessarily, but they’ve lost the crudeness of childhood, and their fangs are fully sharpened now.

They don’t quite worry after him, because that isn’t how British purebloods take care of their own. Instead they ask pointed questions, after marriage contracts and children and wives, he should be looking for one by now shouldn’t he? He’s not going to stay an employed bachelor  _ forever  _ is he? It’s bad enough he’s living with- well. They certainly don’t understand  _ that  _ aspect. He can’t give them an answer that silences, because he doesn’t quite have the words anymore to explain himself.

* * *

They start speaking after the final battle.

It’s a strange thing borne out of the fact that a good number of manors are abandoned after the war and they are still, in fact, students and need to finish their education. But Hogwarts is also in tatters and its population halved, so houses are mostly abandoned and quarters and classes compressed into whatever’s left or already repaired by the time normalcy begins to reemerge. All the seventh years group in the same dorm, men and women pressed together to try and scrape back together their last year.

No one approaches the Slytherins much, and no one actually talks to the Gryffindors beyond congratulations and uncomfortable questions. And with the others planning their weddings, lives, building on the strength they’d made during the rebellion, Harry’s left adrift still. With the others trying to move past the permanent stain on their families and his family locked inside cold, dank halls, Draco’s left moorless, now.

They still ride in the sky and haunt their old sites, and it means their paths cross multiple times. The first dozen they only nod, sneer or look away. Resentment and anger still linger. But everyone is tired of hatred and pain and heat, and eventually, on a night spent away from the great hall and the reporters that have managed to sneak in, they meet in the kitchens, and Harry stares tiredly at Draco, whose hair is a flopped mess.

They’re silent for a moment before Harry offers up the plate of scones he’d been munching on. Draco takes one.

“Do you think someone’ll get the reporters out before Mcgonagall transfigures one into a mouse?”

“You think anyone will  _ stop  _ her?”

* * *

Harry doesn’t bring anyone home, and it’s not because he’s broken or gay or whatever the news spouts that week.

He respects their privacy for one, knows the life they’ve built could be torn down thanks to one wrong judgement of character, and he won’t do that. He’s not used to letting in a few at a time anyways. The years have stretched his trust thin.

For another, as he’d noticed and ignored, assumed normal in his teen years, he simply… Doesn’t feel the need. The want for such an intimacy. Harry had tried with Cho and Ginny, had even went on with a muggleborn man for a time. And they’re all nice people, genuinely. He just can’t feel more for them. Ron boggles at it when he admits it over a pint, can’t even wrap his head round it.

“D’you at least wanna- y’know, with a bird, or a, a bloke-”

Harry shakes his head. Ron looks knocked sideways as he takes a swig of his beer, but he eventually writes it off as something that isn’t important so long as he’s happy.

Bless Ron for not being like his wife.

* * *

Draco doesn't bother bringing anyone home. Besides their home being a sanctuary, somewhere away from the masses, few would understand. The Wizarding world is made of narrow minds, something he knows dearly after his was blown open.

And it's not only that, not only. He's uncertain of its normalcy, something not talked about in pureblood circles, because who wants to talk about the lack of love for their spouse?

Yet he rarely feel anything besides a desire to hold and touch. When he does, a wish to connect and cherish, he finds it in an armchair by the fire as he corrects papers to the tune of stories about teaching a toddler to float.

He speaks of it once in an aside to Blaise, watching Gregory try to show his daughter the steps to a waltz. Blaise laughs, a sound that's never been quite pleasant.

"Why do you think my mother had ten husbands, yet talked to Auntie Narcissa more?"

* * *

They talk more regularly, complain about friends and worry about futures and it's almost freeing, missing the normal trappings of their upbringings.

"I've got a dozen job offers and more people than that offering their daughters to me," Harry mutters, and Draco snorts.

"I've labs and masters preemptively banning me for my part in the war," He retorts, and Harry sighs.

"Is it strange that I just want to go back to being just Harry? No fame, no war martyrs for parents. I don't want to do all these things people are pushing at me." 

"Even your Gryffindor pets?" 

He punches Draco, but he also remembers Ron saying they should become aurors together, Ginny flirting with him, Hermione going on about "using his word for good". Maybe Draco's heard some of it in the halls, maybe he's heard the same, because he sobers from the smirk he's wearing.

"I don't want anything to do with nobles anymore, oddly enough. All this shit, the dancing around, politics, tradition." He looks out at the stars, contemplative. "Your muggleborn is still the top in our class, beating every pureblood in our year. What does that say about tradition?"

A good amount. Harry look out at the stars with him and wonders what comes next.

* * *

Harry doesn’t spend much time with the old Slytherins. They’ve all graduated and moved past schoolhouse prejudices but there’s still lingering distance, and, well… When is he going to get the chance to?

Regardless. When he does it feels half awkward and half tense, gazes averted as they talk stiffly. He goes on about how little Theodore the Third- Capital Required- needs more help with his gestures, or how it’s such a surprise to see Zabini here isn’t it, he’d never think he’d see a pureblood in a mundane library?

At the few parties they go to, begged off by Parkinson or Narcissa, he doesn’t talk. He doesn’t feel a need or urge to, with the stares and whispers. Everyone’s wondered what’s happened to their saviour in the past few years, and damn if purebloods aren’t the biggest gossips in the world.

Harry stays quiet around them, and it’s enough for them both.

* * *

Draco doesn’t spend much time around the old Gryffs, and it’s not quite out of any lingering resentment. He certainly doesn’t like them despite tempers and feuds cooling, but it’s not the reason. Really, when would he ever get the time to in the first place? Organising the majority of defense classes at a school is, in fact, difficult.  _ Who knew. _

Regardless. He sees them still sometimes as they visit old professors or friends teaching and he doesn’t quite approach, staying on the fringes and letting them. He doesn’t curb his sarcasm or eyerolls, but he doesn’t cut them to the root with barbs. From how Weasley eyes him like a juggling crup each time, he’s doing well. He talks with Granger about changes to the curriculum and about fake magical creatures with Lovegood and really woman, you really think a creature able to steal magic to build a nest exists?

At the few holiday visits he tags along to, quietly asked over breakfast, he doesn’t talk. The Weasleys are warm people and don’t treat him badly but he knows he’s out of place, even with Aunt Andromeda there with Teddy. Not that the others mind. Everyone’s stunned at the fact the pureblood snot’s dropped the airs, and damn if it doesn’t make them even warier of him.

Draco stays civil and a solid presence, and it’s enough for them both.

* * *

“I don’t want to marry, to live in that huge manor, to do  _ any of this _ \- I just want to stay at Hogwarts and- fuck, I don’t know-” Draco runs a hand through his hair, shaking and red with anger. It doesn’t look good on him but Harry doesn’t really care, grabbing his arm and making him sit.

“Why don’t you stay?” The blond stares at him like he’s crazy. Harry rolls his eyes and adjusts his glasses. “Half the teachers are teaching two subjects. They need professors. You need a Thing.  _ They know you. _ ”

Draco opens and closes his mouth before he looks away. There’s still something dissatisfied to him but Harry won’t push. He appreciates it when Draco doesn’t, and so he won’t. Instead he goes back to the troll of an essay he’s writing, figuring out how to word it so it fits the foot he needs. Thank Merlin Slughorn’s standards aren’t exactly high at this point.

“I don’t want to leave you alone.”

Harry blinks and looks up. 

“I’m eighteen. You don’t need to worry about me.”

“No, I- you’ll leave. I won’t.” Draco rubs a hand over his face. “I happen to like you, because I’m a complete fool and got attached to an idiot. So.”

Harry thinks about that. It’s not like when he was trying to figure out if Cho was pretty and needed a hug because he wasn’t a dead boy, which is nice. Or like when he was trying to figure out if Ginny really meant to flirt while she was dating someone else. Or-

He just has shit luck, doesn’t he?

“I like you too, I think. But not really-” 

“No, me neither.” 

They both pretend they don’t breathe sighs of relief and continue to think and definitely not sit there blankly with the new revelations. Harry eventually sits up, tossing his essay aside.

“Why don’t we rent a flat or something? Somewhere we’ll have privacy, and you can floo in every night and I can stop in after. Whatever I end up doing.” There are ink stains on his fingers. He hates quills. “It can just be… our place.”

“Hm.” They look into the fire, Room of Requirement accommodating despite the ruins still around it. “That’d be. Nice.”

* * *

“Harry, are you really- happy, around him? How can you get past the last seven years?”

Harry waffles an answer. It’s something he doesn’t quite want to say outright to Hermione. She wouldn’t understand it as much he thinks, much as she may get the gist. She hasn’t been caged with no key in sight, after all. 

* * *

“Draco, just what do you  _ see  _ in him? I doubt you can use him after the final battle.”

Draco doesn’t dignify that with an answer. It’s something he doesn’t want to explain to Pansy. She wouldn’t care about the emotions behind it, embroiled as she is in their upbringing. He only broke away from it thanks to two years spent in hell, watching his mother cry and his father stand as a statue waiting torture. He can’t compress that all in a way she’ll accept. She hasn’t faced the death of everything she knew and had to accept it, after all.

* * *

They go home every day around six and seven, opening the door and stepping through the fireplace in a flare of green. Harry sets the table for dinner, Draco beginning to gather ingredients, and an actual fire is started in the colder months. Sometimes, they’ll talk about their students or the things they’ve read, how Mcgonagall or one of their old classmates is doing. Sometimes they’ll just exist in the silence, moving around each other in practiced movements.

The others don’t quite understand it all, and that’s fine. They’re content.

**Author's Note:**

> come see >> thelennystorm.tumblr.com  
> https://twitter.com/VulpinePrints


End file.
